STEP-NC compliant information modelling for wire electrical discharge machining component manufacture

Over the last five years, a great deal of research effort has been concentrated on the development of a new data model ISO 14649, informally known as STEP-NC. It has been strongly argued that STEP-NC has huge implications on the integration of the computer-aided design/computer-aided process planning/computer-aided manufacture (CAD/CAPP/CAM) (CAx) systems, giving the opportunity to realize interoperable computer numerical control (CNC) manufacturing. This is largely owing to the data model, which provides the capability to revolutionize the current state of the art in CNC manufacturing by offering a bi-directional interface with a high-level description of the geometrical and manufacturing information. This paper provides a view of how these STEP-NC compliant information models can be used to support the wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) CAD to the CNC process chain. The models are based on part 13 of the ISO 14649 standard, which is dedicated to the WEDM process, together with part 10 of the standard, which specifies the general machining information. The information models have been identified and their structures have been defined and modelled using the unified modelling language (UML). A STEP-NC compliant WEDM CAx prototype system, based on the Java and the object-oriented database management system (DBMS) ObjectStore, has been constructed with an example case study to demonstrate the information models.